How Not to Write Meaningless Blog Posts For The Success of your Blog

Whenever I publish a post about blogging, my aim is to help you to create a successful blog – not just another blog like thousands and thousands of others in the blogosphere that never go anywhere.

Creating a successful blog either happens by accident or with a well-planned strategy. With the immense growth in both inbound marketing and the awareness of blogging, we have unlimited guides on the web to help us to create a content-based blog that is meaningful and appreciated by the masses.

We often read about the importance of writing meaningful and quality content, maintaining the professionalism of a blog.

• Save

Whenever I talk to my students about blogging, I always ask them to treat their blog like a person (a friend) and create a persona around it.

You read a lot about all of the things you should be doing to create a successful blog.  It is also important to know the things you should not do in order to maintain the standard of your blog.

In today’s post, I will share with you some of the things which you should never do, in an effort to maintain the quality and value of your blog.

For reading:

• Top 21 blogging mistakes that can ruin your blog
• Biggest mistakes of my blogging journey

How not to be a lost sailor with crappy post content:

Before I begin with my usual style of point-to-point delivery of information, let me give you an example:

Think of any role model you like, and pretend you have the opportunity to meet with him one day. You have long respected his work, but when you meet him you discover that he is not the person you expected him to be.  Would you still have the same respect for his work? For me, the answer would be a resounding NO.

The same is true for a blog.  When a reader subscribes to a blog, he subscribes with an expectation. That expectation is related to the quality of your blog’s content, the content value, your insights on the topic, speedy coverage of a topic, and various other reasons.

The moment a subscriber sees a low-quality content his expectations are lowered, and he begins to lose trust in your blog.

Following is a quote from a psychological study I was reading the other day:

“When a person meets another person, he sets an expectation. Usually, the expectations are high. Now it’s up to the other person to either raise the expectations higher with his actions or to disappoint with his actions.”

This is one normal phenomenon that we see in everyday life, and today I will be relating this same phenomenon to a blog.

You can earn the credibility by not losing it!

Filler content: Maintain quality filler

There are two main forms of blog posts:

• Pillar posts: Those are the well-researched, deeply insightful and very informative posts. Such articles usually require hours of time to research and compile.
• Filler posts: These are quick blog posts that are written to maintain posting frequency. These posts are usually short, precise but informative.  (For example, press releases, quick update posts, Whatsapp updates with new features, etc.)

If your blog is a content factory where you publish every bit of news in your niche, your readers won’t mind as long as the content is related and adds information or value.  Otherwise, such posts are roadblocks for your regular readers.

This is the 21st century, and time is money for your readers. With a wide range of options available to them, people prefer to spend their time reading high-quality material.

If you are writing a filler post, make sure that you maintain the quality by adding insight, information and value.

If, for example, you are writing about Whatsapp getting an update, in addition to releasing the updated feature, also discuss how the update will be helpful to current users and in what direction the company is going.  This is one basic example that could apply to any niche.

Don’t publish if you can’t:

Maintaining a blog posting schedule is very important for any blogger, as I have mentioned hundreds of time in the past. But such things as writer’s block, personal matters and various other factors in life can interfere with a regular writing and posting schedule. During these times, bloggers can look to publishing press-releases, guest posts and a few other techniques to keep the blog updated.

If you are a regular ShoutMeLoud reader, you may have missed the regular flow of content during the past two weeks, as I was taking a break. I had the option to push out filler guest posts or content for the sake of continual posting, but I do not believe this best serves my regular readers. This kind of posting can cause readers to lose trust and the blogger to lose credibility over time.  In my case, instead of publishing mediocre blog posts I followed the strategy of not posting anything.

When faced with a similar situation, you can take also take advantage of social media sites to let your users know that you are taking a break.  Often people are satisfied to simply understand why you are not posting, and they may be happy to know that you are on holiday or taking a short break.

Takeaway: Don’t publish content just for the sake of publishing content.  Publish only solid, valuable content to match your blog’s standard.

Use old blog posts :

Even if you are hit by writer’s block, you can always re-write or update your old blog posts to add more value to the publication. This is one old technique used by many pro-bloggers to keep their blogs updated while at the same time maintaining the quality of their blog posts. For your regular readers you can add a note like the following:

Note: This post was been updated on x/xx/XXXX to add new ideas and information.

• Read: How to recycle old blog posts for traffic and exposure

Use quick posts:

We never know when we are going to be very busy in life, but if your blog is your business, you need to maintain it to a high standard. There are many strategies that you can follow to ensure you are publishing quality quick posts.  For example:

• Round up posts: This is my favourite type of quick post, as it helps to create value and lower the bounce rate, and internal linking helps to improve the SEO value of my blog. You simply need to pick one good topic and combine previous related blog posts to create a resource post. Such articles usually require very little time to compile.
• Infographics: Infographics itself is a blog post, and they are great to improve social bookmarking and social media.
• Polls, contests, interviews and other varied post types will keep your blog engine running. You can find a list of such articles here.

Takeaway:

No matter what the reason is, if you wish to maintain the quality and value of your blog, you should never publish low-quality content that does not meet the high standards of your blog. It is better not to publish at all than to publish low-quality filler content. Creating a blog that can be trusted for high quality takes time and lots of effort. Low-quality posts will only serve to reduce the credibility you have worked so hard to build over time.

Let me know what you do when you are unable to write or publish anything on your blog. Also, what kind of content makes you lose trust in a blog’s credibility?

• Save